Many indoor communication products are equipped with an optional connector for connecting thereto an external RF transmitting/receiving element in addition to a standard built-in RF transmitting/receiving element, e.g. an antenna, for adaptively enhancing quality of RF transmitting/receiving signals passing through the terminals in various environments. Generally, an RF switch is disposed between the built-in transmitter/receiver element and the external transmitter/receiver element and functions for selecting one of the built-in transmitter/receiver element and the external transmitter/receiver element to conduct the RF transmitting/receiving operation. Such RF switch is generally so-called as an RF switch connector.
So far, mechanical types of RF switches have been use in prior art. Such RF switches are generally integrated into RF connectors to function as the above-mentioned RF switch connectors. Before a detachable RF transmitting/receiving element is coupled to the RF switch connector, a built-in RF transmitting/receiving element is connected to the RF switch connector for default communication. Afterwards, during the inserting operation of the external RF transmitting/receiving element into the RF switch connector, a force will be exerted onto a mechanical switching member inside the switch so as to switch the RF transmitting/receiving path from a terminal associated with the built-in RF transmitting/receiving element into a terminal associated with the external RF transmitting/receiving element. In this way, the built-in RF transmitting/receiving element and the external RF transmitting/receiving element can operate selectively, depending on practical requirements.
In practice, there are some problems encountered by a mechanical switch. First of all, since the RF switch connector is preset to couple to a built-in RF transmitting/receiving element, a switching operation of terminals is necessarily performed when it is a detachable RF transmitting/receiving element to be connected instead. However, the detection of the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element might be problematic. For example, a poor contact state between the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element and the RF switch connector is hard to be found from the detection data of an ordinary multimeter if the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element and the built-in RF transmitting/receiving element are both open circuits connected in series. Furthermore, since the contacts of the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element and the RF switch connector are generally disposed inside the RF switch connector, it is difficult to execute contact detection with a probe.
Furthermore, if the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element is an internally connected RF transmitting/receiving element, the allocation of the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element and the built-in RF transmitting/receiving element would be limited by the mechanical RF switch connector. For example, considering respective dimensions and functions of the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element and the built-in RF transmitting/receiving element, the detachable RF transmitting/receiving element and the built-in RF transmitting/receiving element disposed both inside the RF device are supposed to have a specified wire distance to the connector. Therefore, wire cost and wire routing space would be increased and undesirable transmission power loss would be caused.